How is Jeff Medkeff?

[mrund]

Jeff Medkeff is known on-line as the Blue-Collar Scientist.

http://bluecollarscientist.com/

I met and made friends with Jeff at TAM 5.5 this past January. Recently he was diagnosed with liver cancer.

According to Wikipedia contributor Kwix, Jeff passed away yesterday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_S._Medkeff

Can anybody confirm, or, preferably, debunk, this information?

[Aepervius]

There are sadly good possibility this is not a hoax.

From the blog itself :

...for someone who has a disease that normally kills 90% of the people who are diagnosed with it within six months.

Looking at wiki it says 3 to 6 month, especially bad prognosis for large tumor.
He had one tumor which was more than 10 cm large, and another smaller.

Still googling produced no news at all on this.

[skepticality]

Sadly,

I have to report something on Jeff. This morning I recieved an e-mail from his wife. Jeff started to have some internal bleeding a couple days ago and was taken to the hospital. He died last night while sleeping.

I'll post more details as I get them, I had only read the news while waiting for my carpool this morning.

Jeff was a great guy, I only got to meet him once while he was passing through the Atlanta airport for dinner. He was scheduled to be on many panels at Dragon*Con on the Space track, lending his experiences in Astronomy. He will be greatly missed.

[mrund]

Thanks. I've blogged Jeff's passing.

http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2008/08/jeff_medkeff_19682008.php

[skepticality]

Thanks,

We are now figuring out what to do to honor Jeff at Dragon*Con. He had a few lecture spots at the con this year. One on the Skeptic track, and a few on the Space and Science tracks.

I decided to not remove the one on the Skeptic track and want to do some form of memorial type event for Jeff there.